Googie Withers

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Alternative Title:
Georgette Lizette Withers

Googie Withers, (Georgette Lizette Withers), British actress (born March 12, 1917, Karachi, British India [now in Pakistan]—died July 15, 2011, Sydney, Australia), showed remarkable breadth of talent, portraying a variety of characters on the stage and in film, with the height of her popularity occurring in the 1940s and ’50s. She often acted with her husband, Australian actor and director John McCallum, whom she married in 1948 after they performed together in It Always Rains on Sunday (1947). Withers’s career began at age 12, and she had already appeared in several plays before her motion-picture breakthrough in The Girl in the Crowd (1935). Subsequent films include The Lady Vanishes (1938), One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942), On Approval (1943), Night and the City (1950), and Shine (1996). She also had a recurring role on the TV prison dramaWithin These Walls (1974–78) and continued to act on the stage in Australia and Britain, making her last appearance in 2002 in Oscar Wilde’sLady Windermere’s Fan. Withers was the first non-Australian named to the Order of Australia (1980) and was made CBE in 2002.